The scene at this tiny, remote high school was as boisterous as it was remarkable: Nearly everyone on the field and in the bleachers belongs to the Navajo Nation. Most of the people in Red Mesa not only reject claims that their team’s nickname is a slur, they have emerged as a potent symbol in the heated debate over the name of the more widely known Redskins — Washington’s NFL team. More than half the school’s 220 students eagerly accepted free tickets from the team for an Oct. 12 game near Phoenix, where they confronted Native American protesters who were there to condemn Washington’s moniker.

None of that mattered to the Red Mesa Redskins as they marched onto the field for their game against the Lobos of Many Farms High School. It was homecoming, and the players knew they needed to keep winning if they wanted to make their first appearance in the state playoffs in five years.

Sitting in the front row, Superintendent Tommie Yazzie basked in the crowd’s festive mood and in the sight of the newly built football field, which cost nearly $400,000 in federal aid at a school that struggles to pay for computers and wheelchair-accessible bathrooms.

“This is one of the reasons why it’s so hard to change the name,” he said with a smile, trying to make his voice heard over the cheers. “I don’t find it derogatory. It’s a source of pride.”

There's more, including statements from someone who clearly thinks she knows better than anyone whether or not they ought to be offended.

The piece gives the best evidence I've seen yet that this is all made up political garbage.

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

It was called by some the ouroboros — a serpent that swallows its own tail. For some it was an early emblem of utter futility. And I think about it when I hear some of the strange, absurd and utterly self-contradictory reports from North American campuses, particularly those that come filed under the “anti- racism” banner.

For if there is one movement, that by its humourlessness, its obsessive mania and its blindness to its failings, chokes on its own goals, it is the so-called anti-racism movement. And you will find its most feverish exemplars in the very citadels of reason, the modern-day university campus. Nowhere in the West will one find such fundamentalist fury as in the frenzies of campus political correctness on the subject of race.

There is no venue more receiving, that more struggles to accommodate, than universities. They have codes and classes and whole courses to instruct on the vile institutions of racism — and yet to read the news is to come away with the idea that every day some campus is a repulsive hotbed of bigotry.

Universities are frantically sensitive to the least, the most minuscule, the most trivial examples of whatmight be racism. They police for “insensitivity” with the same intense puritanical rage that governed the Victorians on the subject of sex. To read the student newspapers of some campuses, it would seem the hearty days of the KKK are just a tick of the clock away from returning. They seem especially convinced that every white person is a bundle of unearned advantages, owns a place purely because of his/her skin colour, and wanders through life with a Free For Me Pass simply because daddy and mommy, and their daddy and mommy, were white.

It’s astonishing. Could there be a better definition of racism, a better example of a purely racist concept, than this, the holding that all a person does and is springs from the colour of his skin?

The entire notion is called “white privilege.” In our moderns seats of learning, with their skyrocketing tuition rates, and celebrity professors, do they ever test an idea? Do they ever ask the questions that even a 10-year-old would ask about this concept of “white privilege?”

The Miami-based artist, Huong, joined protesters, referred to as the Dream Defenders, on their 25th day of camping out at the capital as they urge Florida Gov. Rick Scott to change the Stand Your Ground law.

The painting, “We Are All Trayvon Martin” shows Zimmerman firing a gun at a figure wearing a hoodie, but the painting includes a mirror where Martin's face would be to convey that the shooting could have happened to anyone.

I find this disgusting and indicative of the lengths some will go to further an agenda. This mural is a lie and the artist's suggestion that we are all Trayvon Martin a bigger one.

God forgive me for wishing a pox on all who would purposely foment division while making crap up in the attempt to do so.

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Jim Wallis has sunk to new depths, apparently deciding to channel Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and others who make their living dividing us on the basis of skin color.

I read this last night and could do nothing more than shake my head in disbelief:

It’s time for white people — especially white parents — to listen, to learn, and to speak out on the terribly painful loss of Trayvon Martin.

If my white 14-year-old son Luke had walked out that same night, in that same neighborhood, just to
get a snack he would have come back to his dad unharmed — and would still be with me and Joy today. Everyone, being honest with ourselves, knows that is true. But when black 17-year-old Trayvon Martin went out that night, just to get a snack, he ended up dead — and is no longer with his dad and mom. Try to imagine how that feels, as his parents.

It was a political, legal, and moral mistake to not put race at the center of this trial because it was at the center from the beginning of this terrible case. Many are now saying, “There was a trial; the results must be accepted.” How well the case against George Zimmerman was prosecuted, how fair the tactics of the defense were, the size and selection of the jury, how narrowly their instructions were given — all will be the subject of legal discussions for a very long time.

But while the legal verdicts of this trial must be accepted, the larger social meaning of court cases and verdicts must be dealt with, especially as they impact the moral quality of our society.

This is not just about verdicts but also about values.

And the impact of race in and on this case, this trial, and the response to it around the country must now all be centrally addressed.

There is no doubt that this whole tragedy began with the racial profiling of Trayvon Martin. In George Zimmerman’s comments, rationales, and actions, the identity of Trayvon as a young black man was absolutely central. Both sides in the courtroom admitted that.

And when the defense put up as a witness a white woman who had been robbed by a black man as central to why Zimmerman picked out Trayvon Martin to follow and stalk — it really said it all. Was she robbed by Trayvon Martin? No. So why should he be suspect because of another black robber? That is racial profiling. Period.

As the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. said in his most famous “I Have a Dream” speech, whose 50th anniversary is coming up this August 24th:

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

King’s dream failed on February 26, 2012, in Sanford, Fla., when George Zimmerman decided to follow Trayvon Martin because of the color of his skin. This led to a confrontation in which a child was killed by an adult who got away with it, because of the way Florida laws were written and interpreted.

What exactly happened between Zimmerman and Martin will never be known, because the boy is dead and the adult did not have to testify and be cross examined. How a black boy responded to a strange man who was following him, and what the stranger did with that, is a story we can never really know. But regardless of the verdict that rests on narrow definitions of self-defense and reasonable doubt, it is absolutely clear that racial profiling was present in this whole incident.

And racial profiling is a sin in the eyes of God. It should also be a crime in the eyes of our society, and the laws we enact to protect each other and our common good.

Friday, July 12, 2013

It seems much of the country is gripped by the George Zimmerman murder trial. As it comes to a close, many in Hampton Roads are upset about a Facebook post by a local head of the NAACP.

"To the majority of the African-American community, I would find it offensive," said Norfolk City Councilman Paul Riddick.

Tristan Breaux, 25, was sworn in as president of the Norfolk NAACP in January. He is the youngest president in the branch's history, but members of the organization are calling for him to step down.

"He obviously does not have the maturity when to speak and when not to speak," Riddick added.

The controversy started Friday morning. Breaux's posted a comment on his personal Facebook page about the George Zimmerman trial. The remark quickly spread.

"My initial reaction was that it wasn't true, that somebody had gone on his Facebook and had planted this," Riddick said. "I just couldn't imagine the president of the Norfolk branch of the NAACP making a statement like that."

"I wonder why it is that we are always willing to say someone who clearly had a shaky past, was the victim," Breaux asked in the Facebook post, referring to Trayvon Martin.

"I think this should be tried in the courtroom and not on social media," said former Norfolk NAACP President Bob Rawls.

Rawls says he is worried how the statement reflects on fellow members.

"If he had been talking to another person or two or three people and voiced his personal opinion that's different," Rawls added. "When you put it on social media so somebody in Florida, California, Oregon or New York is reading, this, that is wrong."

The post went on to ask if people are blinded to why Trayvon was staying with his dad and why he wasn't at home at at time of the shooting.

...

"I think that the national office should come into this," Riddick said. "It would be an effort to silence this fellow. I don't know how recall process works, but I think they should recall him."

Parker said his ‘cornball brother’ comments were taken out of context and admits he was “shocked” it received national attention:

“It was never to condemn the young man,” Parker told Scillian. “RGIII is a great young man with a bright future. It was more about concerns not condemning.”

Parker continued:

“It was just a conversation that’s had in the black community when athletes, or famous entertainers or whatever, push away from their people. And that’s really what it’s about. You saw it with O.J. Simpson, and some other people, where they say, ‘Well I’m not black, I’m O.J.’ So it’s more about that, not about RGIII and what’s going on. It’s more about this thing that we’ve battled for years and why people have pushed away from their people. It’s more about that.”

Parker was sharply criticized by several sports blogs and media outlets for what many perceived as nothing more than cheap shots to a bright young star. Last month, after RGIII said he didn’t want to solely be defined by his race — Parker responded on ESPN 2′s First Take:

“But my question, which is just a straight honest question: Is he a brother, or is he a cornball brother?”

I called Parker’s comments “irresponsible.” Plenty of informal conversations ‘exist’ in barbershops, dinner tables and at the workplace. But if you’re just going to ‘put it out there,’ then you need to do it carefully and responsibly. And certainly not be shocked when your ‘I heard in the barbershop details’ attract criticism.

“I wasn’t saying that he wasn’t black enough,” Parker said. “And so when people say that…it’s just not true…I was saying these are the conversations that take place once a guy pushes away. So, it was never aimed at him or I was calling him that. I’m saying these are the conversations that take place.”

Someone should have the temerity to ask Parker how exactly RGIII is 'pushing away' from 'his people'.

Is it because he refuses to tie his identity to the color of his skin? Is it because he wants to be measured by the content of his character?

I think I would advise folks to push away from Rob Parker. We could start with ESPN.

If Robert Griffin III is a “cornball”, then clearly cornball is compatible with aptitude, proficiency, talent
and intelligence. Frankly, I’d like every young black man in America to be defined that way.

As an educator, I have had the privilege to work with African American male students in a number of capacities: as a teacher, principal, counselor, coach, and mentor. The level of raw potential that I have witnessed has been nothing less than astonishing. And what hurts so bad is so much of it goes to waste because so many young black men are trying hard not be labeled “cornballs” and are living down to the stereotype of what black men are supposed to be.

I have worked with students with natural academic proclivities in virtually every academic content area. I’ve seen the brilliant, yet undeveloped scientist; the astute, but unfocused mathematician; the prolific yet nonetheless intemperate writer. They all seemed tortured and tried to hide their natural, intrinsic interests in lieu of dumbing down, in order to “keep it real”. After all, being intelligent, respectful, funny, smart and well-spoken is still not a “black thing”.

All these young, aforementioned potential, groundbreaking, trailblazers, who I’ve known and taught, are now dead; two were shot, one was stabbed — all caught in the vortex of pre-determined behaviors that allegedly communicate what authentic blackness is supposed to look like. In the end, so many of our kids are convinced that they need to display disrespectful, oppositional attitudes towards any form of adult authority.

This reverse stereotyping has led to a wholesale march of our black boys to the cemetery and prison — sacrificing the futures of far too many of our sons.

“He’s not one of us,” Parker exclaimed.

Time and again, when African Americans don’t follow the prescribed behaviors laid down by self-appointed gurus of all things black, we inevitably get this level of vitriolic hate, jealousy and animosity. The loud, unsolicited, unqualified rant by Parker, a veteran journalist, speaks volumes about the divisions that still exist within the black community.

Mr. Porter goes on to chronicle that which makes RGIII a 'cornball' in the eyes of the ignorantly hateful. It's good stuff, righteous stuff, stuff that needs to be aired out and debated in the black community and beyond.

Thursday, December 13, 2012

I've been a Redskins fan since I was 12 years old. For those counting, that's 40 years of Redskins fanhood. And as a fan, it's been a long time since I've been as excited about football as I've been this year.

That excitement is the direct result of the impact that last year's Heisman Trophy winner and this year's starting QB, has had in DC.

I talked to some people down in Washington, D.C. … friends of mine who are around at some of the press conferences, people I’ve known for a long time. But my question, which is just a straight honest question, is he a brother, or is he a cornball brother? … He’s not really, he’s black, he kind of does his thing, but he’s not really down with the cause, he’s not one with us, he’s kind of black, but he’s not really like the guy you want to hang out because he’s off to something else …

I don’t know because I keep hearing these things. We all know he has a white fiancée, there was all this talk about he’s a Republican, which there’s no information at all. I’m just trying to dig deeper into why he has an issue. Because we did find out with Tiger Woods, Tiger Woods was like, ‘I got black skin, but don’t call me black.’ So people got a little wondering about Tiger Woods …

To me, [his braids are] very urban, and makes you feel like, I think you’d have a clean cut, if he were more straitlaced or not like, wearing braids, you’re a brother, you’re a brother if you’ve got braids on.

That bile comes from the lips of ESPN's Rob Parker and is proof that the election of Barack Hussein Obama has done nothing but embolden the race-baiters and haters in this country, to which I think it's safe to now add Rob Parker.

All of this was in response to RGIII’s comments that “For me, you don’t ever want to be defined by the color of your skin. You want to be defined by your work ethic, the person that you are, your character, your personality. That’s what I’ve tried to go out and do. I am an African-American in America. That will never change. But I don’t have to be defined by that.”

He continued, “"I am aware how much race is relevant to [black Redskins fans]. I don't ignore it. I try not to be defined by it. But I understand different perspectives and how people view different things. I understand that they're excited that their quarterback is an African-American. I play with a lot of pride, a lot of character, a lot of heart. I understand that. I appreciate them for being fans and not just fans because they're African-Americans.''